Morocco earthquake: Hope is fading in Talat Nyakoub where the stench of dead bodies is ‘overpowering’
The large rotary blades of a military helicopter fire up, lifting emergency supplies towards villages otherwise cut off from the world.
They’re also shuttling the injured and dead away from the epicentre.
An enormous cloud of dust engulfs dozens of survivors and emergency teams who have descended on the town of Talat Nyakoub, at the epicentre of the earthquake to dig for the living and recover the dead.
CCTV shows moment earthquake struck – latest updates
Women waiting for news of relatives
There is hope that loved ones didn’t die when the quake hit the Atlas Mountains here in Morocco, but the smell of dead bodies is at times overpowering and the grim faces of rescue workers speak volumes.
Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people gather at a newly-formed road created when the street below disintegrated.
Beneath them, groups of rescue workers operating in teams of between six and 12 dig their way through the rubble.
There is little chatter, the sounds of drills and pickaxes fill the air. The occasional sound of somebody wailing punctuates the near silence. A sad indicator that another body has been found.
This is a desperate race to save lives but as each hour passes here, hope fades.
Rescue workers say finding survivors is difficult, not only because of the heat, but because of the amount of time that has passed since the earthquake struck – and the severity of that impact.
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Moment deadly earthquake struck Marrakech
A military helicopter in the earthquake zone
Whole streets have been utterly destroyed in what survivors say was more like an enormous explosion rather than the shaking of an earthquake.
They described how the ground and buildings blew upwards from the earth before collapsing. Multi-storey buildings are now pancaked.
Air Said Mohamed says he rescued more than a dozen people before rescue workers got here.
“Sometimes you find someone alive, sometimes not, they have already died,” he said. “But there is hope, I rescued three people here and 10 in the other village above.”
In the blistering heat, rescuers dig through the rubble looking for survivors, but in all honesty, they’re expecting to find the dead.
While we filmed, we saw many dead – but we saw no survivors.
When a body is found, it is extracted from the rubble, wrapped in a blanket and placed on an orange stretcher.
Rescue workers searching rubble in Talat Nyakoub
Recovery teams then take the body to a dusty car park that has become the main gathering point for the relief effort.
They’re usually followed by the family, almost all in tears.
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Dad killed by rubble as he tried to protect son
We watched as the body of 18-year-old Heba was recovered and placed on the ground in the car park.
She was only visiting her family here – Heba was a student living in Marrakech.
The family of 18-year-old Heba
Rescue workers in the Atlas Mountains
Her family survived, she did not. Her mother and father cried and hugged, while their relatives tried to support them. They were inconsolable.
You see this scene time and again at the epicentre.
I met Fatima standing on the ridge watching relief efforts. She has lost 10 members of her family already and told me others are still missing.
“The rescue workers are doing a really good job but look at everything they have to dig through – concrete, sand rocks… it’s very difficult,” she said.
She has given up hope of anyone still being alive.
“Within seconds everything fell down, some people managed to run out of their houses, others didn’t make it,” she said.
The family of 18-year-old Heba
Although most of the rescue work is done by hand, the teams occasionally use drills powered by generators to break through the exposed floors and ceilings of the buildings – it’s hard to differentiate between the two.
Youssef Id Mesouad was here when the body of his mother was removed from the family home.
He’s returned with his uncle and cousins to wait for the relief teams to find the body of his father.
He stands with them on top of the house, now a pile of rubble, gesturing and explaining the layout of the house.
Youssef has lost both of his parents
Survivors watching rescue efforts in Talat Nyakoub
Youssef knows there is no hope left for his father. He told me his mother’s body was found near the ceiling of the house, not underneath it.
Throughout the day the bodies of the newly recovered were laid in a row in the car park. Their families sitting beside them, waiting to take them away.
Youssef knows his father will be one of them, he’s just waiting for him to be found.
World
At least 26 people killed in Israeli attack near aid distribution site, Gaza health ministry says
At least 26 people have been killed near an aid distribution centre in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry.
Earlier, a nearby hospital run by the Red Cross reported that at least 21 people had been killed. The hospital, which has been receiving bodies and the wounded, also said another 175 people had been injured.
Witnesses said the deaths came after Israeli forces opened fire at a roundabout near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub, a new aid organisation backed by Israel and the US.
However, Palestinian and Hamas-linked media have attributed the deaths it has reported on to an Israeli airstrike.
It is not yet clear if eyewitnesses and Hamas-affiliated media are giving different accounts of the same incident.
Sky News has contacted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) for comment.
Witnesses tell of shooting
The area where the reported shooting took place is controlled by Israeli forces.
Ibrahim Abu Saoud, an eyewitness, said Israeli forces opened fire at people moving toward the aid distribution centre.
“There were many martyrs, including women,” the 40-year-old man said. “We were about 300 metres away from the military.”
Abu Saoud said he saw many people with gunshot wounds, including a young man who he said had died at the scene. “We weren’t able to help him,” he said.
Mohammed Abu Teaima, 33, said he saw Israeli forces open fire and kill his cousin and another woman as they were heading to the hub.
He said his cousin was shot in his chest and died at the scene. Many others were wounded, including his brother-in-law, he said.
“They opened heavy fire directly toward us,” he said as he was waiting outside the Red Cross field hospital for word on his wounded relative.
Palestinians arrived to collect aid from a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub in Rafah last week. File pic: Reuters
Controversial new aid system
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) operates as part of a controversial aid system which Israel and the US says is aimed at preventing Hamas from siphoning off assistance.
Israel has not provided any evidence of systematic diversion, and the UN denies it has occurred.
The foundation’s distribution of aid has been marred by chaos, and multiple witnesses have said Israeli troops fired on crowds near the delivery sites.
UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to work with the new system, saying it violates humanitarian principles because it allows Israel to control who receives aid and forces people to relocate to distribution sites, risking yet more mass displacement in the territory.
Before Sunday, at least six people had been killed and more than 50 wounded, according to local health officials.
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Last hospital in northern Gaza out of service
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From 31 May: Moment Israeli warplane strikes Gaza
GHF says aid distributed ‘without incident’
The foundation says the private security contractors guarding its sites did not fire on the crowds, while the Israeli military has acknowledged firing warning shots on previous occasions.
The foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment following the hospital’s claims.
In an earlier statement, it said it distributed 16 truckloads of aid early on Sunday “without incident”. It dismissed what it referred to as “false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos”.
Meanwhile, the UN’s aid system has struggled to bring in aid after Israel slightly eased its total blockade of the territory last month.
Those groups say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it extremely difficult to deliver aid to Gaza’s roughly two million Palestinians.
Experts have warned that the Palestinian territory is at risk of famine if more aid is not brought in.
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From 29 May: Meet Gaza’s paramedics
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251.
They are still holding 58 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 54,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.
The offensive has destroyed vast areas of the territory, displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population and left people almost completely reliant on international aid.
World
Israel confirms Hamas chief Mohammad Sinwar was killed – as group makes counter-offer on ceasefire
Israel has confirmed its forces have killed Hamas’s Gaza chief, Mohammad Sinwar, as US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff called the group’s counter-offer on a ceasefire “totally unacceptable”.
Mohammad Sinwar became the leader of the militant group in the Gaza Strip after his older brother Yahya Sinwar was killed last October.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it had killed Sinwar on 13 May, and was the target of a strike on a hospital in southern Gaza.
Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told parliament on Wednesday that he had been “eliminated”.
A handout image of Mohammed Sinwar from December 2023. Pic: Israeli Army / Reuters
Hamas seeks changes in US ceasefire proposal
It comes as Hamas said it was seeking amendments to a US-proposed ceasefire deal, offering 10 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
On Thursday, the White House said Israel agreed to a 60-day ceasefire proposal, which would see the release of nine living hostages and half of the known hostages who have died over the course of a week.
Israel and Hamas would then continue talks to bring the remaining hostages home, but Israel would retain the right to resume military action in Gaza if talks were to break down.
In a statement about the proposal on Saturday, Hamas said its response “aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip”.
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Israeli ambassador claims ‘no starvation in Gaza’
Hamas offer ‘totally unacceptable’ – Witkoff
Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy, Mr Witkoff, said on social media that Hamas’s response is “totally unacceptable and only takes us backwards”.
“Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week,” he added.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters that the group has not rejected the proposal but added Mr Witkoff’s response was “unfair” and showed “complete bias” towards Israel.
Israel has not yet responded to Hamas’ counter-offer, but has previously rejected the conditions and demanded the complete disarmament and dismantling of the group.
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Meanwhile, Gaza aid groups have said dozens of World Food Programme (WFP) trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people.
The WFP added: “After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by.”
Read more:
Last hospital in northern Gaza out of service
How the new Gaza aid system collapsed into chaos
UK will ‘seek to do more if it can’ for Gaza children – Lammy
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation”.
Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries via the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Instead, it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies.
Seven people have been killed and dozens are injured after two bridges collapsed in Russia overnight.
A train derailed after a bridge collapsed on to it in the Bryansk region, killing the driver and six others.
Some 69 people were injured in the crash, with the train travelling from Moscow to Klimov at the time.
Earlier, local authorities blamed “illegal interference” for the incident.
Later, a bridge collapsed in Russia’s Kursk region while a freight train was passing over it.
Local officials said one of the train’s drivers was injured in the crash.
The scene of the train crash in Kursk region. Pic: RIA/Telegram
Russia’s Baza Telegram channel, which often publishes information from sources in the security services and law
enforcement, reported, without providing evidence, that the bridge in Bryansk was blown up, according to initial information.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Since the start of the war that Russia launched more than three years ago, there have been continued cross-border shelling, drone strikes, and covert raids by Ukrainian forces into the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions that border Ukraine.
Pic: Moscow Transport Prosecutor’s Office
Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said: “Everything is being done to provide all necessary assistance to the victims.”
Emergency workers are at the scene of the train derailment, attempting to pull survivors from the wreckage.
Russia’s federal road transportation agency said the destroyed bridge passed above the railway tracks where the train was travelling.
Images from the scene show passenger cars ripped apart and lying amid fallen concrete from the collapsed bridge.
Other footage on social media appeared to be taken from inside vehicles which narrowly avoided driving onto the bridge before it collapsed.
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